Pride
by AgentNerd
Summary: Bill has never come out to Moira. Moira is too blinded to figure it out herself. After Nardole almost accidentally outs Bill, Bill explains.


"Your room is a mess!"

"I just moved back in, my room is supposed to be a mess; _you're_ the one who lost the vitally-important-USB-thingy in my mess!"

"It's a Tralfamadorian compound data chip," Nardole corrected with a huff, "and the Doctor lost it, not me."

It had only been two days since Bill had moved back home after the alien-bug-infested house incident. The Doctor, in a particularly thoughtful moment, had taken the TARDIS and recovered all of her belongings. She discovered them sitting neatly packed away in boxes inside her bedroom the night she moved back in, but between an extra busy work schedule and tutorials she hadn't unpacked anything more than the clothes she wore on a day-by-day basis.

But while the Doctor had been repacking her stuff, he had apparently also packed away somewhere between her socks and coffee mugs an alien data chip, by virtue of it falling out of his pocket. A chip that he now needed or else ' _a small planet in the outer galaxies will cease to exist!_ '. He was too busy working out details on the chalkboard in the TARDIS to find it himself, of course, but he helpfully volunteered Nardole to help Bill look for it.

"Why doesn't he have, like, a tracker or chip-detector thing that would make this go a lot faster?" Bill complained.

"Not everything is that easy. Have you checked inside that box there?"

"Oi, those're my knickers! Don't you dare get any closer, I'll look through it once I'm done—"

"Bill dear, I'm— _who's this_?"

"Mum!" A loud _thud_ accompanied by a yelp was heard as Nardole dropped the alarm clock he was holding in surprise, and Bill whipped around to see Moira standing in her doorway. She looked between Nardole and Bill appraisingly, an all-too-familiar inquisitive look on her face, one that said, _I will get answers._

"This is, he's…um…" she looked at Nardole, who thankfully at the moment was too surprised by the interruption to say anything. She obviously couldn't say that he was her time-travelling professor's cyborg companion who was helping her search for an extra-terrestrial chip that was needed to save the world. _Think, Bill, think!_ "He's a friend! A friend from uni, we just stopped by to, uh, get something from my room…"

"Oh now, don't start that with me," Moira chided, "I've raised you since you were a baby, I can tell when you're lying. The blushing, the panic…I know what's going on. This is your boyfriend, isn't it?"

Something twisted uncomfortably in Bill's gut at the assumption, but she knew not to expect anything different from her foster mum. At least she'd made it easier for Bill to lie

"But…" Nardole began, suddenly finding his voice. She knew the idiot was about to correct Moira, so Bill subtly stomped on his foot, hard. He yelped and then went silent.

"You caught us! Sorry, he was helping me unpack a little bit, I've been missing a USB stick I need for class…" some sort of alien god must have been watching over her, because suddenly a flash of silver caught her eye, peeking out from behind a sweater in the box she had just been looking through. She didn't recognize it, which meant it had to be what they were searching for, "and here it is! Better get this back to school so I can work on my project, c'mon Nardole!" She pulled him along by the sleeve of his duffel coat, shoving past Moira before she could get another word in, "I won't be back for dinner, don't wait up!"

" _Nardole_ …" Moira muttered, rolling the name somewhat distastefully around in her mouth as she watched them go through the door, "at least she's found _someone_."

"I thought you didn't like men." Nardole said when they were a couple of blocks away from the flat and Bill had finally released her grip on his sleeve.

She snorted, "That's one way to put it."

"Not attracted to them, I mean," Nardole amended. "Why did your mother assume I was your boyfriend?"

"She assumes a lot of things."

"But doesn't she know—?"

"Y'know," Bill interrupted, "by the time I came out to my mates, they'd already been taking bets for _months_ over when I was going to tell them?"

She dropped onto a bench at the end of the sidewalk, just outside of a small park. After a second, Nardole joined her.

"They'd probably known I was gay before I did. I never tried to hide any part of myself from the world, even when I didn't know what some of those parts meant. And because they'd figured it out so easily, for the longest time, I assumed Moira would figure it out too. Even when she didn't, I still hoped…" her voice trailed off wistfully. She shook her head, regaining her train of thought. "But when she has a certain idea of how the world looks, it's hard for her to change it. I've never come out to her."

"D'you not think she would accept you…?" Nardole's voice was low, cautious, a tone he'd never used with Bill before, but she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice. Her hands twisted in her lap, a slight frown on her face as she thought it over.

"No…yes…I…Look," she said, "I love my foster mum. And she loves me, I know she does, but we've never had the best relationship, y'know? It's like, no matter what I do, I can never really do it right in her eyes. I'm never good enough, can never meet her expectations. Like, whenever I get her gifts on holidays, if it's too nice she moans about how it better not cost too much money, or how I was making her look bad because she didn't get me anything really fancy. But then if I just give her, like, something handmade, or just a card or something, she'll make some sort of sarcastic comment like, "hope this didn't put you out". She says I should gain independence and nags me about moving out, but then the second I do she complains that she'll never see me anymore. She'll nag me if I'm not wearing make-up, or if I'm in sweats, saying I need to make more of an effort; but if I doll myself up for a night out or whatever she'll say I'm trying too hard. No matter what I do, I can never do anything right.

"That doesn't sound very fair."

"Of course it doesn't, but that's who she is, and I've come to accept that. And I guess, I haven't told her I'm gay because I just don't want be more of a failure."

Nardole opened his mouth, about to protest—

"I know I'm not a failure!" she said quickly, stopping him before he could start, "but sometimes she just really has a knack for making me feel that way, even if she doesn't mean to."

They sat in silence. Bill seemed to become lost in thought, looking intently at the hands clasped in her lap, while Nardole just wasn't sure what to say. After a couple of minutes, Bill spoke again.

"I came out to my mum—my birth mum—when I was fourteen. In my head," her voice was quiet, almost as if she were talking more to herself, and Nardole thought that some part of her might have even forgotten he was there, "I was actually kind of nervous. I think just about everyone is. But I sat on my bed and pictured her, sitting next to me.

"I turned to her and started telling her about how there was this girl at school that I really, really liked; her name was Alice, and she was kind and funny and pretty, and she made my heart flutter a little, and I had never felt that way about a boy, even though I knew the other girls did all the time…and I just kept talking and talking and I finally said, 'Mum, I think I'm gay'. And I started crying. Sobbing, really; but she just smiled and pulled me into a hug and said, ' _I'm so happy you're bringing more love into the world. Don't ever be ashamed of that_.' And it felt so _real_ ," tears started rolling down her cheeks in earnest as she remembered, blurring her vision. She could _feel_ her mum, but she still wasn't _there_ , she wasn't—

Suddenly her face was pressed into rough orange wool as two arms wrapped tightly around her, holding her as she cried. She'd always assumed just by his nature that Nardole hugging anyone would be awkward, but this hug felt as if he had never been more sure of anything in his entire life. It was warm, and comforting, and reassuring; everything a hug should be.

"She'd be so proud of you," Nardole said softly. Bill started crying even harder, but somehow managed to shift her arms around underneath his tight embrace to hug him back.

He held her there for a few minutes, until she started to calm down, and then let her go somewhat reluctantly. Bill's face was red, covered in tears and snot, but she was too emotionally exhausted to feel embarrassed about it, and he didn't look bothered in the slightest.

"Thank you Nardole," she said.

"I mean it, your mum would be proud of you," he replied, "I know the Doctor is. And I am too."

Bill's heart warmed at the praise.

"Now c'mon, let's get back to the TARDIS. The Doctor can save the world, and you and I can have a nice hot cup of tea."

 **A/N: Can everyone write more fics about Twelve's Team TARDIS please? I love their dynamic so much, and I'm so sad to see it go. This fic was first posted on my profile at Ao3. If you're interested in my work, make sure to follow me there, because sometimes my fics are uploaded there earlier than on fanfiction.**


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